Winter Wheat
Alexander Hope
Published by Alexander Hope at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Alexander Hope
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Chapter One
Germany spawned from the umbra embryo of Satan’s seed, birthed heretics demanding religion’s disembowelment. “Religion is a fantasy now and always!” scribbled Marx and Freud while the masses prayed. Nietzsche’s festering brain attacked the religious impulse, “The greatest event of recent times is that God is dead! That belief, in the theory that a Christian God is no longer tenable, is beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. Among the advanced races, the decline and ultimately the collapse of the religious impulse will leave a huge vacuum. The history of modern times will be in great part the history of how that vacuum is filled.”
Was God dead? Or interminably fatigued. Why worry what the little idiots, who peopled His garden, did with their feeble lives? Why waste time with further evolution? Let the little jerks keep their little brains and littler hearts.
During the tumultuous start of the Twentieth Century, God must have turned His gaze elsewhere. How else could it have begun? That Century of Evil.
God, created in the image of Man, turned His gaze or allowed Evil to lurk in His blind spots. God was watching, but as with all creatures, His peripheral vision was obstructed or muted. Blind spots dotted the map during this Century of Evil: this tale began in one such blind spot.
In the lush, wheat country of what was to become the USSR, there grew a most evil being: his lust, so twisted, tore life’s breath from all creatures that scurried across its path. This evil left hand of Beelzebub—the Great Mistress Beelzebub as Alexander Mackovick and his followers had the effrontery to call the Mistress of All Illusion, the Lady of Dung—began his murderous path in the shadows of a confused national revolution; a revolution that was intended to start a new age, change the face of the earth, and bring Utopia to the Workers of the world. Alexander Gregor Mackovick was a suffering child fertile for Beelzebub’s moldering Seeds of Evil. His father, Gregory Mackovick, an unfortunate aberration of humanity, fomented a Worker’s Revolution by spending his days slitting Nationalist’s throats, his nights making stilted speeches calling for the Tzar and the Tzar’s family's mutilation.
On a chilly evening at the Finland Station in Petrograd, Gregory Mackovick stood listening to an inspirational speech by Lenin. Lenin, the Marxist disciple was, atop an armored car, clutching roses. He spoke on the bloodletting that would follow if the Revolution was indeed to propel the Workers to power. He called for peasants to burn their food-stuffs rather than surrender them to the war effort. “I’ve called for all soldiers to mutiny. Force the mutiny! Don’t give food to that fool Kerensky.”
Gregory Mackovick listened intently. Someday he would have his own entourage and be given roses by the masses. Lenin’s entourage consisted of his sister, Maris, his wife, Krupshya, and his protégé, Joseph Stalin. A mutiny would destroy the war effort and the “bread winner” conscription. Screw the government! Revolution was the only way to dodge conscription; the only way for him to stay alive long enough to slit his fat wife’s ugly throat.
In the Winter palace, he would bed down with Sisters of the Revolution. He wouldn’t puke at their looks or smell. No more fat, witch wife with three hundred pounds of flesh hanging from her arms and belly and sagging breasts. A knot of vomit formed at the base of his throat; his nostrils burned; his face twisted; he swallowed back the bile. He would dump the fat bitch down some deep well—in Simbrisk—a well deep enough to accommodate a load of crap. He would tumble her lard-ass into the well then spit straight down on her ruddy face. She would choke and sputter and drown. He started with the fat pig because of her close ties to the Ulyanovs. She had placed him at the side of the elder Ulyanovs’s son—Lenin. “He believes in humanitarianism,” Gregory told his wife. “He believes in crap,” she countered. “His parents are Christians. He hates his parents. So he hates Christians.” “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, he hates that Christian crap and that Islam crap and that Jew crap and especially your Beelzebub crap. Because it’s all crap. All of it believed by crap-brained women who impregnate their crap-brained children with the same crap. If the women had let it be, religion would have died out two thousand years ago.” He stepped toward her and whispered, “Women will never contribute anything to civilization.”
“Idiots like you and Lenin will?” she said.
The back of his hand slammed into her open mouth as she attempted to continue. Blood sprayed the dung-yellow walls of the tiny kitchen. She fell back into a heavy wooden chair; her enormous weight twisted the chair’s back and split its arms; blood-laced spittle spewed from her mouth toward him as he stomped from the house.
Lenin’s pounding voice drummed back into his thoughts. Shots rang out from the back of the armored car; a dozen Nationalists fired their weapons toward a cowering Lenin then shot point-blank at the audience. Mackovick felt the bullets whiz past him and hit two Comrades. He dropped to his knee and braced his modified rifle against his shoulder and fired at the nearest Nationalist—direct hit—then another. Before it was over, he had fired seven times; he scored six direct hits. No one in Russia was a better shot. He would have made the seventh shot, but the shot was too quick. Quick so no one would see: the shot ricocheted off the armored car’s upper, right corner inches from Stalin’s crawling body. Stalin fell from the top of the armored car then looked directly at Mackovick.
Mackovick charged forward and grabbed one of the downed Nationalists; he drug the dying youth toward Stalin. “Comrade Stalin, this Nationalist tried to assassinate you, ”Mackovick said, then pushed the blade of his knife into the youth’s groin and jerked it straight up to the boy’s belly—slicing clothing, belt, and intestines. The youth’s bloody guts spilled out onto Stalin’s shiny, black shoes. Stalin turned his head to one side and threw up. Mackovick looked directly at Lenin and said, “Comrade Stalin has no stomach for death?”
Alexander Gregor Mackovick’s mother contributed no less to the boy’s evilness. She was politically aware, but preoccupied with indoctrinating the local female lonelies into the evil Coven of BabaYaga—First Daughter of Beelzebub. BabaYaga, who the black witches called Sacred Mother of All That is Evil, had been portrayed to decades of White Russians as the Skeleton Witch of the Birch Forest. She flew through the air on a stick wrapped with wheat-fodder. Her hut was fenced with human bones—a splintered reminder of her insatiable hunger. Worship of the ancient witch had never been diluted by the invading Mongols or Huns or Balto-Slavs or Vikings or any of the strident religions: Islamic or Christian or Judaic. BabaYaga held sway over tens of thousands of black witches. The Great War and the Great Revolution gobbled up able-bodied men and spit out whole townships of frightened, lonely women; BabaYaga lapped them up and sucked them in; BabaYaga reigned supreme.
Alexander’s mother worshiped the Skeleton Witch in slime-slick birch walls eight feet underground; just inches from BabaYaga’s Mistress Beelzebub’s grasp. It was a left handed grasp: the Mistress’s right hand was crooked in a constant pleasuring movement as She got off on the evil of the world: evil that had erupted from the mastorrhagia that spewed molten-hot from her gangrenous left breast. Beelzebub wanted the Game of Evil to be played by all.
Chapter Two
He maketh peace in thy
borders and filleth thee
with the finest of wheat
--Psalm 147.14
Peace, bread, and land. Russian soldiers deserted the blood-soaked battleground. “They have voted for peace with their feet,” Lenin shouted to the masses. But in truth there was no honor: Evil permeated every corridor of the world. The Century of Evil spewed forth. Germany was the cauldron, but Satan and his Mistress Beelzebub felt more at ease in Russia. As the world cowered to the strident moves of Germany, Satan dug His hooves into Mother Russia. “My beloved,” the Fallen Angle said in a booming baritone voice, “can we not give more power to your BabaYaga? Her motherland is ripe. Let the juices run. If He sleeps through the next Century, we can make Russia . . . Earth’s window to Hell.”
Mistress Beelzebub halted her pleasuring movements. She looked curiously at her fingers. He had interrupted her again. Worms had devoured most of the synapses in her brain, but she could still analyze situations. He was jealous of her contentment. Why else would He interrupt the thing that most delighted her? He was not Himself. He was worried. He was never certain how long a period of Evil would last. He no longer had contact with the One Above so He was never certain if His foe was asleep or weary of the idiots peopling the Earth. But even Her worm-eaten brain knew the Big Man Above was asleep. Proof was the ease with which Germany had become Europe’s most powerful nation. She knew that the Germans would someday prove just how evil one human could be toward another. A shiver darted down Beelzebub’s spine and lodged between her open legs. Her fingers found the shiver’s destination. “Yes, my love, more power will be BabaYaga’s. But should she side with the Bolsheviks or the Nationalists?”
“My love, the Bolsheviks will create the Evil Empire. That’s all well and good, but they have no God . . . so they have no Satan. We must empower BabaYaga to defeat the Bolsheviks no mater how long it takes. They must be replaced with Believers.”
“Christians, Jews, Islamic . . . ?”
“No matter. If they believe in Him then they believe in Me. I humbly ask only one thing. That at the close of this century, no Atheist will be left standing.”
The Atheists turned Russia into Hell. They had an obsession for Force. “An oppressed class which does not strive to gain knowledge of weapons, to be drilled in the use of weapons, to possess weapons, an oppressed class of this kind deserves only to be oppressed, maltreated, and regarded as slaves,” Lenin said. But he felt his control of Evil shifting to a stronger being.
Aexander Mackovick witnessed the first aberration of Mistress Beelzebub’s promise to give BabaYaga more power: the vintage floor creaked in the alcove toward the rear of the tiny house. Alexander’s leg was numb. Fast asleep. He was vulnerable in the spot in the center of the alcove. What if his sister, Tanya, woke and went looking for a drink of water. Or what if his twin brother, Christian, came home early from his prayer meeting, or his idiot father made a surprise visit from his guerrilla warfare against the White Army. Numbness ran from his right leg up to his hip. His hip was pressed, uncomfortably, against the dusty floor. He had attempted to straighten out his leg, but tiny needles danced, from his hip to his ankle, stopping to do an excruciating Polka in his calf. Damn! He should get up, but the real action was just beginning in the tiny cellar beneath the uncomfortable floor. He had been at the floor’s peephole for almost an hour. He pressed his eye tightly against the rough outline of the peek-hole. He would retain the images and when his mother left the house—tomorrow—he would find his mother’s treasured picture of Beelzebub, that naked creature, pleasuring herself. Nothing in his life was more fun. Nothing gave him the total feeling of achievement. Bring up the images then pop off. Problem was: the images were always there.
At his cramped desk in his favorite class, Natural History, the images of the cellar activities and of the naked Beelzebub telegraphed burning, spine-tingling, red-hot charges to his crotch. The charges forced him to stay seated, after the bell, until the front of his heavy trousers no longer revealed his purulent thoughts.
Kineindrof, Alexander’s favorite teacher, thought the handsome boy was horny for the girls, especially the Tatteroff sisters. Something was wrong. The once brilliant student was flunking. “Alexander, you have a problem that is screwing up you grades. It’s your constant thoughts of sex . . . correct?” Alexander looked down. “Your day-dreams about girls are sapping your attention. Your attention to your teacher. Teacher has a solution.” Kineindrof reached down and took young Alexander’s hand. Alexander attempted to stay seated, but his teacher was very insistent. The hunched-over youth was pulled from the protective seat, and led into the cramped utility closet. His teacher knelt down and undid the strained buttons on the front of the youth’s trousers. When he released the youth’s problem, Kineindrof got down to work. No problem for Teacher. Teacher had solved more of these problems than Teacher cared to think about. Teacher was not to think about the problem-solving or the problems the problem-solving might create. Someday his superiors would find out. He would be ruined: banished from teaching: banished from the profession he joined just so he could do that special act. He repositioned his stiff knees against the hardwood floor. Genuflecting in front of so many young boys. Practicing his life-long commitment to his own form of religion. A rather humiliating religion, as all religions were. He was certain he was not truly a homosexual or a pedophile. He just liked the subservient position and the subservient act. He would do it for a woman. But women and girls always wanted to get him into trouble with the authorities. Men had beaten him just for the suggestion. His only solution was to convert young boys. Young boys would let a snake or a large chicken do it to them. Anything, anybody, anytime. But he had to admit, the urine-stench, that permeated the utility closet, from un-rinsed mops and week-old underwear that most young boys wore, was a potent aphrodisiac. He loved it all. But most of all he loved Alexander Mackovick.
Kineindrof looked up at the youth, standing soldier straight, trying to catch his breath. Alexander was an anomaly. He was a unique specimen of God’s less-than-perfect evolutionary system. The youth was beautiful. But Alexander’s father was one of the ugliest human beings Teacher had ever met. “Why the Hell does Alexander know nothing of Marx, Engles, Sorel, or Lenin?” Gregory Mackovick had asked. Teacher was so frightened he thought he would pee his pants, but his mind was wondering how it would be to genuflect in front of the ugly monster. To service him. Then the monster would beat Teacher to death. Death was the only way the humiliation would end. Some Brute would beat him to death. The thought of Gregory Mackovick kicking in the utility-closet door stopped Kineindrof’s movements. Alexander looked down, and then thrust his hips forward. Kineindrof continued. If there was a God, he would either cure Teacher or kill Teacher.
Alexander remembered that day in the utility closet. He and the feminine, little teacher continued to meet once a week. The last time was two days before Kineindrof was found drowning in a pool of his own blood. He had been castrated. The custodian found him, in the boy’s gym, sans his privates. He died, without naming the Castrator. A week later, Alexander spotted said same privates hanging in a locker down the hall from his French class. The locker belonged to Dimitri Sonotov the youth leader of the Worker’s Party for the Saratov District. Dimitri was big enough and strong enough to have ripped off the infamous privates with his bare hands. What a fantastic locker-trophy.
Kineindrof was gone. No one to relieve Alexander when the images seeped into his brain; image upon image seeping through the peek-hole, cloying, like the after taste of too much of a good thing. The nausea, now, was not from the images, but from his bladder’s painful, insistent need to be emptied in the distant out-house. The damn dust didn’t help. It was thick and packed his nostrils shut and quickly coated his open mouth and rasping throat. Screw it! He would lay his face in a foot of dust just to watch the fat, witch ladies move their giant, sweaty bodies around the gas-lamp lighted cellar; tons of naked flesh that rode the light waves through the peek-hole, through his eyes, and into his brain. The images blocked thoughts of anything else. Pink, naked witch flesh. He had placed his long, lanky body down in the same position so often that each Thursday night, when he approached his secret peek-hole, he was certain he could see a hazy imprint—a fossil-like etching—on the hardwood floor. The floor, like the rest of the house, was never dusted. His mother never lifted a finger. The finger usually pointed at, and then painstakingly caressed, a secret passage in a secret book retrieved from a secret place. She kept the lap sized book behind a storage cabinet in the cellar. In the morning, minutes after everyone has left the house for the day, she would sneak down to the musty cellar. Hours would pass, there-at, up would come his mother from the cellar. Cellar-stench clung to the big woman’s naked sweat-slick body. The smell permeated the small house, seeping into the material of the sofa and chairs. The stench stayed in Alexander’s nostrils: a life-long smell that ignited the nerves in his lower belly. If his mother thought no one was home, she stayed naked. His mother was the fattest, ugliest witch. They were all ugly, but their actions made him forget about their size and their ugliness. The turn-on was great, but he was playing a dangerous game. If they caught him, he would die.
It happened to his pals! The night he brought his pals to the house, he had been egged-on, by the taunts, that there were no such things as witches. “You guys don’t know crap,” he told his three, school pals. “I’ll show you something you’ll remember the rest of your lives.” He had them wait at the edge of the wheat field. “Don’t make a sound or we all die,” he said.
His pals all went, “Wooo!” then giggled as he signaled them to be silent. And told them to stay in the protective shadows of the mature wheat. He moved quickly toward the quiet house. He looked around as he entered. The silence and lack of evil vibes told him he was early. The Coven meeting hadn’t started. Damn! The guys will think I’m full of shit. He moved quickly back out toward the wheat field. “Come on out. There will be no show . . . tonight,” he whispered into the darkness. He moved deeper into the wheat. He saw the path: wide, like three bodies had been dragged side-by-side. Alexander began to run. His heart was exploding as loud as the local artillery in the background. His pals would be food for BabaYaga. He followed the wide path around the side of the worker’s shed. In the center of the crushed-wheat circle, sat his pals. They were tied together as if riding a toboggan. Lucas, his best pal, was seated in front, and in his open mouth was the barrel end of Alexander’s mother’s shotgun. Alexander looked around at the dusk shrouded wheat field. She’s here . . . someplace. He could feel her evil presents. She’s waiting to kill me! But he had to try to save his pals. Pals are all a fellow has in this screwed world. He moved slowly toward his pals. Lucas’s eyes moved wildly around then looked straight down. It was too late! Alexander’s shoe-tip caught the center of the twine. The single blast from the booby-trapped shotgun blew Lucas’s head clean off then ripped into Detter’s head, but only took a small corner of Stavi’s head. Alexander screamed. The fat, ugly bitch had slaughtered his pals. His was not a mother you screwed with.
He untied the shotgun and wiped the blood slick barrel on what was left of Lucas’s jacket. As he charged toward the house, his mind ran through a catalog of places where his mother might keep the shotgun shells. The first drawer under the sideboard was where he found them. He turned. His mother was standing at the kitchen entrance. Small streaks of moonlight squeezed through tiny places on the sides of his mother as her huge body twisted through the door-frame. Alexander loaded the gun and fired. The shot tore out the plaster wall at the side of the frame. A second shot hit the frame and blew a small flash of pellets into his mother’s massive upper thigh. She screamed and slumped to the floor. Alexander dropped the smoking shotgun and ran to his mother. He dropped down and held her head against his chest “Mother! I’m sorry! I didn’t . . . .”
She sat straight up and grabbed him by the back of his head and smashed his face down into the blood pooled on her upper thigh, then pulled him back up and screamed into his face, “Why?”
“Because,” Alexander spit blood, “you slaughtered Lucas and . . . . You slaughtered my pals.”
His mother stood up slowly, lifting him with her, “What are you babbling about?” Wiping his arm across his face, to remove the dripping blood, he said, “You know! Your booby-trap blew their heads off!”
She hobbled toward the sink and pulled an old rag from the counter. She primed the pump then doused the rag with ice-cold water and placed it on the bleeding wound. “Your mind has finally gone.”
“No, I saw them. They’re all dead.” He pointed toward the wheat field.
Alexander stood next to his giant mother in the center of the wheat field. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign of blood, and no sign of his slaughtered pals. While his mother repaired her torn flesh, Alexander repaired the torn wall and door frame. He stretched out the job into the late-night. She had said he would be punished when the repairs were finished. He wasn’t certain which repairs: hers or his. The story, to his sister and brother and finally his father would be that a Nationalist broke in and attempted to rape and murder his mother, but Alexander shot the intruder and the flash accidentally sent pellets into his mother’s exposed legs.
“Alexander, bring the large paddle to the field,” she said.
He lifted the large, wooden paddle off the sideboard, and then followed his limping mother out into the night-shrouded wheat field. Orange and yellow flashes painted the sky in the direction of the Saratov town center.
“Take off your trousers!” she said.
He removed his trousers. He stood naked and shivering in front of the giant woman.
“Where are your underpants?”
“I stopped wearing any,” he whispered. “Please mother, I’m sorry I hurt you.”
She pushed him backwards against the wheat. The dry wheat cut into his body as it crushed beneath him. “Spread you legs!” she said.
Damn! She’s going to beat my privates! It’s going to hurt like Hell!
She brought the paddle down on his upper thigh. The paddle smacked loudly in time with Alexander’s screams and the explosions coming from the center of town. Moonlight cast huge windmill shadows on the wheat as his mother’s fleshy arm lifted then slammed down. When she was finished, Alexander’s upper thigh was as bloody as hers. His mother helped him to the house and dressed his wound then helped him to bed.
Alexander returned to school weeks later. Word was that Lucas and the others had been conscripted by the Nationalist. He was ready to tell his mother when he went home for lunch, but he decided to leave good enough alone and just warm-up some soup. His mother never fixed lunch or supper; she munched on loafs of rye bread and washed the half chewed pieces down with more Vodka then even Rasputin was reputed to have consumed. The mammoth woman became restless if she strayed from the cellar too long. No matter what the wind-chill factor, she would break into a sweat. She would head back to the cellar and sit trying to memorize a tattered book: she would read, then close the book, and turn her head up toward the cellar ceiling, trying to mouth the words. If she had no success, she would slam her sharp upper teeth into her lower lip until blood ran down her chin, like a vampire who had just suckled the neck of a snow-white virgin. Or she would pound her fist into her fleshy mid-section. Sometimes the pain would stop her wondering mind.
From the time she was a child, in Simbrisk, she had trouble remembering what she had read. She would read and forget. She tried to force her stupid brain to memorize by .passing her hand over an open flame until she could feel its blistering lick. To keep her mind focused during school hours, she placed glass in her shoes or underclothing—the girls thought she was having constant periods. But it was just a little blood from the glass in her pants or the pins in her breasts. Pain kept her grade average high enough to graduate in the upper five percent of her class. But her enormous weight, and her need for constant self-mutilation and blood-letting, eliminated any social life except for the Coven. Her life was an open wound. Except for at the Coven. She had an idiot’s life. She had been birthed by an idiot whose long-missing husband had been an idiot. And in the family tradition, she married an idiot.
Her husband was an idiot of the highest magnitude who spent his time trying to create a Utopia that any idiot knew would never come to pass. His Workers would never control the government; the Intelligentsia would control the government and control his Workers. Lenin and Mackovick had started their Revolution too early. Her dullard’s brain had remembered one paragraph that her idiot husband had forgotten; it was from Engels. She remembered laughing when she first read it. It spelled doom for the Revolution and her idiot husband: “the worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the moment is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents . . . he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination.”
She would stay with her idiot husband until the class that he was compelled to represent slits his ugly throat, or until she has gained enough courage or power to slit it herself or have it slit by others. He was surely planning a throat slitting himself. Lenin had certainly ordered Gregory Mackovick to eliminate her. Lenin feared and hated theologians, or anyone who worshiped anything other than the State. Lenin ordered her husband to eliminate the most devoted priests then move to the citizens who worshiped God or Satan or Beelzebub or the moon or stars. He wanted the citizens of the New Russia to believe only in the State lead by Lenin.
Plekhanov, the true creator of Russian Marxism, said of Lenin, “He is confusing the dictatorship of the proletariat with dictatorship over the proletariat.”
She knew Lenin was a genius saddled with a bunch of idiots. And such a genius is no more than an idiot. The Revolution was far from won. Mother Russia was in the throws of Civil War. The idiot Bolsheviks were fighting off attacks by White armies in all directions. From the Gulf of Finland. From the tundraed plains of Siberia. From the mountainous Caucasus. She was certain the Bolsheviks had survived the onslaught only because of Leon Trotsky’s and Gregory Mackovick’s manipulations of the Red Army. To her, it was proof that even idiots could win a battle. But a war was another thing. Admiral Kolchak—third cousin on her mother’s side—in Omsk, was building an army of volunteers for the new government of White Russia. Cousin Kolchak would be the downfall of her idiot husband. She prayed to BabaYaga that it would be a painful downfall. Very painful. Being in the Coven was painful. Being subservient to some putrid hag-witch was painful. But not being subservient and not being in the Coven was even more painful. She had always been in a Coven; protected by the Coven. You need all the protection you can get if you’re two hundred pounds on the eve of your tenth birthday. All men, women, children, and dogs are cruel to the village elephant. She would learn the Chants. She would slit the fat throat of Una, the Coven leader. Then take over the Coven. It was all about the Chants. She would tear the skin inch-by-inch from her own body, but she would learn the Chants. It was all so painful.
Alexander remembered the time he peeked, in shocked horror, with the most excruciating fascination, as his frustrated mother jabbed, the tiny points of her sewing scissors, into her thick upper thigh, so many times that, as a result, at the end of her reading, she was unable to stand. She crawled to the cellar door and called to him, “Alexander! Help me! I fell. I told your idiot father to fix the hand-rail. I slipped. I fell on the ax.” He went down into the dank cellar and pulled and tugged. “I warned your father about the ax,” she said. Alexander pulled and tugged at the three hundred pounds of naked flesh. She was fat and ugly. She slipped. Her heavy breasts slid down his extended leg. She reached up to stop her fall. She grabbed the front of his worn-thin overalls. She did that on purpose, he thought. The fat pig. I’ll puke. Witches all do it with their sons. If she makes me do it with her . . . . He turned his head to the side and puked against the birch wall.
They finally got her into the house. She hobbled to her room just as Christian and Tanya returned from their weekly visit to Simbrisk. Tanya had come home to tell her father and older brother, Alexander, she had joined Lenin’s Vanguard fighters. They were the revolutionary elite. Christian was there but he didn’t join. He told her it would be a slap in the face of her father that she had entered the Revolution not because of him but because of Mrs. Ulanov— Lenin’s mother—who was Tanya’s Grandmother’s dear friend. Tanya was happy to insult her brute father. The man she grew up watching brutalize her mother. But, screw it, her father wasn’t home anyway.
The family was so splintered. Tanya wanted to belong to something. Her father was an Atheist. It appears there was no God or there wouldn’t be all the bloodshed. But mother was a black witch. It appeared that witchcraft worked: both her mother and Grandma could make enemies apologize or disappear. And Christian was a Russian Orthodox. He said God was testing Russia. Only good people would go to Heaven. And then there was Alexander. He was insane. He was evil. More evil than mother and father put together. Alexander would go to Hell—soon—she hoped. In Hell there would be thousands of Tanya look-alikes. They would play little sister to Alexander and tease him but never touch him. She hated Alexander as much as she loved Christian.
Tanya had no idea of where she wanted to be or what she wanted to do in the future, but Alexander did. He knew he would never be a Bolshevik. He had read Marx and Freud. He knew most Germans were idiots. The whole silly Socialist thing came from Germany. Only idiots would think Workers could control the State. Only real damn idiots. And only idiots would follow his brother, Christian’s religion. The Bible was impressive but that don’t mean crap. Many impressive books were stacked with loads of crap as tall as his father. His father’s Twelve Greatest Books were nothing more than intellectual ravings of how dull-brained Workers were somehow more qualified to run the government than well-educated, well-trained politicians. None of the Greatest Books surpassed the Bible. But the information in the Bible showed that Jesus was a sell-out. He was one fantastic philosopher maybe as good as Plato, but he went for the Messiah roll because he was in the middle of a religious area at a religious time. He sold-out. Question for Alexander was: could the Bible be more impressive than the Book of Fire?
On one of the few evenings that his mother was away, Alexander tried to pull the heavy, wooden storage cabinet away from the cellar wall, but all he succeeded in doing was to scratch its fresh, green paint and rip the speckled nail from his index finger. He scared the holy crap out of himself. His heart jumped to his throat when he heard his name. “Alexander,” his brother said, “mother told us the cellar was out of bounds . . . it’s her special place. God treasures children who honor their mother.” Alexander shoved his clinched fist toward the cellar ceiling. “See if your God treasures this.”
Christian spun on his heels and disappeared from the cellar’s entrance.
The little jerk was like some holy ghost always appearing when Alexander was sinning. Alexander tried the cabinet again but it wouldn’t budge. He placed the flat blade of the ax between the cabinet and the birch wall. The blade dug a deep crescent shaped notch in the slick birch. The cabinet did not budge. He sat on the dirt floor and placed his back against the cabinet and slowly straightened his long, powerful legs. The cabinet squeaked and groaned then plowed a semicircle, in the packed dirt floor, as it turned away from the wall. The cabinet’s hollowed-out back had a shelf littered with blood-streaked jewelry and blood-caked strands of hair. And leaning against the far side of the shelf was his mother’s sacred book. As Alexander clutched a corner of the large book, he felt a cold hand drop from above and grip his wrist. He screamed. He jumped back. His index finger caught on the cabinet’s rough edge and ripped his fingernail to the quick. Blood flowed from the torn finger. His hand shot to his new coveralls and wiped the blood across the bib. Not a good move. His mother would kill him if the thing in the cabinet didn’t rip his entrails out and twist them around his stupid neck. Damn! He was in deep crap!
He jumped up and then slammed through the cellar door. He fell against the exterior of the door attempting to hold back whatever was sure to be chasing him. The edges of his heart knifed into his ribs. He was in deep, deep crap. His mother would know he had been snooping. Instant death. The fat bitch would strip naked and lay her sweaty flesh across his gagging mouth. She would smother him to death. But if he went back into the cellar the thing protecting the Book of Fire would kill him or maybe eat him or maybe kill him and eat him. What the Hell difference did it make? He would be dead either way. But if he didn’t straighten up the cellar, he would be dead by smothering which seamed somehow more frightening than death by devouring. Then he knew what his fate would be: his fat mother or the creature protecting the Book of Fire, it didn’t matter, either one would feed him to BabaYaga. He would be her late-night snack.
He sucked the blood from his screaming finger then spat as he wiped his finger on his coveralls. If he left the cellar alive, he would go to the pump house and do some quick laundry. He opened the cellar door and entered. The cellar was somehow darker and smaller—more confining. The thing had stayed behind the cabinet. Or maybe it laid in wait under the stairs! He took a quick peek under the stairs. It was dark. Real dark! Something could be under the rickety stairs. It could stand straight up and bust through the rotted wood. It could pounce on him. Suck his entire being right through his butt. He sat down quickly and jammed his outstretched legs into the side of the cabinet. The cabinet moved toward the wall. It stopped. It stopped! His brain screamed. He cautiously leaned his head sideways: the cabinet had been stopped by a hand pinned between the cabinet and the wall. The hand was lifeless.
He reached up and gently touched the fingertips. Dead! It’s dead! It’s a feast for BabaYaga. Damn, you don’t screw with BabaYaga’s food. Not BabaYaga’s food! He was in the deepest crap of his young life. He had to straighten thing up or he would be the next feast for BabaYaga. He scooted on his butt to the side of the cabinet and pressed his legs against it so it turned away from the wall. There in all its naked splendor was the body of Tanya’s math teacher. She was the one Tanya said had called her the daughter of the Seed of Satan. The witches had mutilated the teacher’s once attractive face. Both of her eyes had been pierced with something hot and sharp.
He reached out and touched the teacher’s naked breasts; they were cold and hung down toward her blood-streaked face. They were large but not too large. He would have loved her in a different time and a different place. He giggled. But they were not compatible. She was upside-down and he was right side-up. The two of them were a mismatch. His parents would never approve. People would laugh and speculate how they got it on. But he would have loved her. Some heavy, face-make-up would be a must. He touched her again. It was true love. An explosion, too close to the farm, startled him. He pushed the body back so its hanging hand wouldn’t slip near the back edge of the cabinet. He repositioned the sacred book, and then with a grin stretching the corners of his mouth, he pinched the naked breasts one last time. Another explosion! Nearby! The hand gripped him. Damn! He dropped straight to the ground and shoved the cabinet straight to the wall in one swift move.
On the way to the pump house, Alexander spotted Christian, up the dirt road, sharing passages from his tattered Bible, with another fruit-cake. His brother turned and wagged a finger of shame toward him. “Screw you! You holly turd!” Alexander shouted. An explosion echoed from somewhere in the north. The blast hit in the center of the road. When the smoke cleared, Christian was still leafing through his Bible. The holierthan-thou turd would live forever. But Alexander won’t live through the day if he didn’t get the blood out of his coveralls.
He stepped out of his coveralls and shirt as he entered the pump house. Chilled breezes blew across his naked body.
“I’ll tell Mama,” Tanya said from the back of the pump house.
Alexander took a heart-stopping gasp of air. He turned toward the dark shadows at the back of the shed. “Damn!” he said. “What the Hell are you doing here?”
“You know I wash clothes today. You came to expose yourself. I’ll tell Mama. I’ll
tell her you used bad words and you peed yourself.” Tanya pointed at his naked front.
He looked down at urine dripping from his flaccid penis. “No . . . I just came to wash something from my clothes.”
“Where are your underpants?”
“I stopped wearing them.”
Tanya stood in the shadows and stared at him.
“You want to touch it?” he said.
“Yuck! Who would want to touch that nasty thing?”
“Just let me borrow your hand for a second.” he whispered, “it won’t bite you . . . I promise.”
“Christian might come and see.” She moved deeper into the shadows.
Alexander’s heart began to tear through his chest as he moved toward his sister. He couldn’t breath. He could just make out her shape in the darkness. When he tried to grab her, to help her when she stumbled backward over a stack of roofing squares, she caught herself and pushed his hand away. This was it. She would learn to use her hands on him. Every day. Life was great! He moved deeper into the shadows. “Reach your hand out,” he whispered. “I’ll find it and guide it.”
“Just stand still,” she said. “I’ll find it myself.”
Alexander dropped his groping hands to his sides. He stood straight and tried to stop his heart from ripping his chest wide open. Her tiny hands would reach out from the dark and bring him his greatest pleasure. He jumped when he felt the light, gentle touch of her left hand on his upper thigh. It moved cautiously—fleeting as a soft breeze, hot as a scorching wind—toward the center of his stomach. And then, with an almost soothing caress, it stopped then slid down toward his other thigh. Hot air panted into his collapsing lungs. If she didn’t touch it in another second, he would pass out. Her butterfly hand was on the move again. It was moving back up. Damn! He decided to just step into it. Or grab it. Her hand was moving in a triangle. From his thigh to his belly to his other thigh and back to his belly. She was sort of triangulating. Locating! Then he felt it! It was impossible to think what it might be, but part of his brain—the part not in total lust—remembered the roofing squares. The little bitch painted his manhood with tar! He tried to grab her to kill her. She escaped around him and dashed from the pump house and into the arms of her mother waddling up toward the front of the house.
Nothing was worth the painful hours Alexander spent as he tried still another tar-removing solvent. After weeks of cleaning, it still stuck to his fingers when he took a leak. His new pals thought it was some joke that his own sister tarred it. Alexander suspected that it was Tanya who gave his pals a blow by blow description. “Did she kiss it and make it well?” one of his pals asked. Alexander lied: said his sister always kissed it. But it didn’t mean crap. All his pals said they did it with their mothers and sisters. But it was crap, except for the creepy kid in second period; he really did it to his sister. Alexander saw it. They all peeked. It was wild. All his pals talked about nothing but sex. It kept their minds off the reality of death; death that had blundered into everyone’s house. They all knew that there was no future. No future that included them. Sex was today; this hour; this minuet. But it was still all crap. No one had had sex with their mother or sister—except Creepo—or their pal’s mother or sister. No one had sex with their aunts or teachers or the Tarteroff twins. No one had had sex with anyone except Mr. Ten Fingers. That was the only game in town and the game was sold out.
But no one spoke about it. Alexander never told his pals about his twice a day sessions. He never told them about his sessions with Tanya’s dead teacher. And he never told any of his new pals about the peek-hole in the alcove. Dead pals were difficult to speak to. He never told his new pals about his mother. About the thick layers of clothing she discarded when she went to the cellar. And in the freezing cellar how she stripped naked and poured pitchers of ice-cold water over her milk-white body. She never shivered, as she should have as any normal human would have; instead she caused the water to turn to steam. His pals and everyone in Saratov thought the Mackovicks were strange but no one chided them; after all his mother’s side of the family came from Simbrisk and was rumored to be close to the Ulyanovs and thus Lenin.
Lenin’s picture hung in the town square next to Stalin, Trotsky, and Mackovick. His father, Gregory Mackovick, had joined the Populist movement after his quiet return from the war against Japan. It was 1905 and his father was appalled by the lack of leadership in Mother Russia. He charged directly into the attempted overthrow of the diseased government of Tzar Nicholas II. Alexander had heard it all before. He became outraged at God or Satan or whoever when he learned of all the men and boys killed in ‘The Bloody Sunday Massacre’. Why didn’t his father die? But no, his father was away from the Massacre. He was killing members of the secret police—the dreaded Okhrana. He killed them in the dark shadows of what was to become Rasputin’s scandalous rectory. Alexander’s father became a national hero. The one chosen to raise a toast to the late Gregory Guerchouny, on March 13th of each year. Alexander remembered going with his father to the tiny meeting hall of the People’s Freedom Party. On the wall was a vivid red poster by Melenkov. It depicted Guerchouny and followers being gallowsed for the assassination of Tzar Alexander II on March 13th 1881. To be a hero in Russia you had to attempt to or succeed in killing a Tzar or someone connected with a Tzar. It mattered not if you lived through it all. In fact, if you were to be toasted, you had to die. His father was willing to die and go where? He was an Atheist. He would go where? When he died?
The Christian Martyrs knew they were going somewhere after death. Or actually they prayed they were going somewhere after death. But Alexander Gregor Mackovick was going nowhere after death, because he was going to live forever! But his brother, Christian, believed there was a Heaven, and that if he was “good” he would spend eternity in Heaven. Despite their parents, both Alexander and Christian had believed in Christ and Heaven when they were children. Only due to the constant preaching of their uncle Christian. Alexander and his twin brother, Christian, followed their beloved uncle through the wheat fields. “Christian,” their uncle said, “always respect the winter wheat. Become Master of the Wheat as I am. Make your soil yield more per acre than any other soil. Stay close to God. He will guide your hand.” Their uncle ran his hand through the thick shaft of the wheat then continued. “Don’t listen to your father and his hate for the Church or your mother and her addiction to Evil. Stay with God and the winter wheat. You will help feed the starving children of the world.
“If the Revolution in Mother Russia succeeds, it will be exported to Germany and Italy and Spain. It will free the Workers. Free the wheat. Free the children. That is good. But I fear that because the Bolsheviks are Atheists they will have even less compassion than the Tzars or the Capitalists. You must try to keep Christianity alive. Only Christianity will work to feed the children.” Uncle Christian gently stroked the crowns of wheat as he passed. “The precious winter wheat must not be in the hands of the Tzars or Capitalist or Atheists. The Revolution will give you a chance to distribute the winter wheat. Do it fairly.”
Alexander’s brother moved toward their uncle. “But, uncle, you’ll be here to distribute the winter wheat.”
“I won’t be. I’ll be joining Our Heavenly Father.”
“We all will, but surely not in the near future,” the brother said.
Uncle Christian stopped and slouched down onto a wooden bench at the far edge
of the wheat field. “You know that your mother has been dealing in black witchcraft. Now she is trying to use her power with the Dung Witch, BabaYaga, to destroy your father . . . destroy the Revolution.” He paused and coughed into his withered hand. “I will stop her. Bad things will be said about me and my beliefs, but remember, I love you, and God loves you.” Uncle Christian turned and kissed his namesake on the lips, and as an afterthought pulled Alexander toward him.
The longer uncle Christian stayed at the Saratov house, the more Alexander believed in the God of Uncle Christian. He loved Uncle Christian and he loved God, but one day Alexander was deserted by them both.
Alexander was following his uncle through the rows of golden wheat. Suddenly, a rabid cow-dog charged toward Alexander. His uncle plunged forward to block the coal-black dog’s demented lunge; the animal’s foaming teeth tore into the old man’s arm and chest and leg and groin; the old man stumbled toward the field’s center and sunk to the ground clutching his beloved winter wheat. The cow-dog turned and lunged toward Alexander. It ripped at his jacket with a fury that could only be halted by the sound of the blast of both barrels of a shotgun held professionally by Alexander’s mother. She walked over and knelt by the cowering cow-dog; she patted its broad head. The dog disappeared. Bending her huge body over Uncle Christian, she lifted the fragile, old man, and packed him off to the worker’s shack, then stuffed a dope soaked rag into his screaming mouth; nothing much was left of his throat and shoulders; he was alive; he was screaming.
Alexander’s mother hummed as she strapped the torn, thrashing body to a cot. She continued to hum as she headed toward the center of town to fetch the doctor. His mother was evil. But she was happy. Uncle Christian was good. But he was screaming. It was obvious that God didn’t reward righteousness. How could such an evil thing happen to his uncle? Righteousness was bullcrap. Evil had all the power. Alexander expected that the doctor would unstrap Uncle Christian, when he arrived, but instead, the doctor said, “He has inflammation of the brain. Hydrophobia . . . rabies . . . it will kill him slowly . . . but it will definitely be fatal.” He put dope on a clean rag and stuffed it into the uncle’s gagging mouth. “He will have violent mouth and throat spasms. You should have come for me immediately.”
“I came for you immediately,” Alexander’s mother said. The doctor spread a greasy looking ointment on the open lacerations and began to sew the gaping flesh. “Impossible! The incubation period for hydrophobia is from ten days to two months. His wounds are from today. He must have been attached another time.” The doctor looked into the fat witch’s evil eyes. The evil seeped into his brain and permeated his entire body then sat heavy in his burning bowels. He pulled his bag closed and moved rapidly from the shack.
Uncle Christian screamed without let-up for three days and two nights. Alexander prayed for his beloved Uncle Christian. “Please God, let him live. He loved you so. Please! You didn’t need to send the Devil-dog. Uncle wouldn’t have killed mother. He knew you would stop her—change her as you changed me.” Alexander repeated the prayer each hour. But God deserted Uncle Christian. And God deserted Alexander. Alexander would never, ever forgive God.
When Gregory Mackovick finally came home, Uncle Christian was held through the night by the loving hands of his younger brother; the same man who he believed would save the world from cancerous Capitalism. That last morning, when Alexander went out to start his chores, he moved quietly, through the early morning mist, past the worker’s shack; Uncle Christian’s screaming body twisted and thrashed. Alexander watched as his crying father placed a large, flowered pillow lovingly over Uncle Christian’s foaming mouth. The screaming was silenced. Forever.
Alexander’s father became the driving force of the Revolution. He had no care for his own safety or the safety of his men. He became the Hero of the Revolution. It was he who had Petter The Great’s Table of Ranks abolished; he set the action in motion that took all schools from the Church; he confiscated the fur coats and jewels of the aristocrats; he took over banks; he led the Red Army to search homes without documentation; he abolished all army rank; he slaughtered Nationalist: men, women, and children.
Alexander’s parents were unique: In a backward country peopled with malcontent do-nothings, his parents participated-maniacally. Alexander never really knew his father. He had spoken to his father no more than a dozen times in his lifetime. On those few occasions, his father had beat him for something or another, and called him a bastard. And his mother was always in the cellar—always naked. How could he approach her? Her ugly body made him puke. His mother did nothing around the house. His sister, brother and he did all the chores. They would rise at 4:00 am, an hour after dawn, in the summer. Tanya would tend the cows and chickens. He would tend the hogs. Christian would tend the orchard.
They all would tend the winter wheat. But Alexander was the one who became Master of The Wheat. Master of The Wheat—three years in a row. Nothing gave him a more fantastic feeling of power. He could produce more bushels per acre than any boy of man in all of the Golden Triangle. While Christian wasted his time becoming Master of The Bible. Alexander Mackovick was Master of The Wheat.
“Uncle loved you best,” Alexander said to Christian.
“With good reason,” Christian said. “I was his namesake. I was never unruly. AndI am and always will be a man of God.”
“You couldn’t be a man of anything,” he slapped his brother playfully on the arm. “He was our uncle. He should have loved us equally. Just as father hates us equally,” Alexander said.
They both laughed.
In the summer season, there was only four hours of darkness—from 11: pm to 3:00 am. If Gregory Mackovick came home, those were the hours of his presents. He would stumble in—exhausted beyond limits—and crash, still fully clothed, on the master bed at the back of the house. He never noticed the filth of the house, and only spoke to his wife about the Revolution or the condition of the winter wheat. Only the Workers and the wheat concerned him. The wheat would feed his Workers until he could twist Russia from the Nationals and establish a Bolsheviki government across the land. When he succeeded—as the Young Turks had succeeded in overthrowing that insipid pig, Hamid, just south, in Turkey—and he became master of Socialist Russia, his fat pig, witch wife and her bastard sons would be the first to be purged. The bastards were only good for raising wheat. They could never be his followers or his sons. He would be the head of Russia. He was a born and bread follower of Marx, but much of his revolutionary zeal had been gleamed from an underground newspaper that had been smuggled from Austria across the Galician frontier.
When he first read “Pravda” it was written by an infamous Menshevik, Leon Trotsky. But now Trotsky was his mentor. Trotsky had some interesting ideas about the Revolution. But both Trotsky and Lenin were chickenshits. No guts; they had attempted to incite revolution while in the comfort of other countries. Neither had guts enough to lead the country when the Revolution was over. Neither deserved the crown. They were both mamby-pambies. Trotsky lead the 1905 revolution. But after its failure and his incarceration, and his escape from Siberia, he headed for Europe and the comfort of the Socialist Bourgeoises only to reappear when the Mackovick troops had cleared the way.
Chapter Three
Mackovick was the only one crafty enough to stay out of prison and out of Siberia except for the disaster-days of service to Tzar Nicholas II against the slant-eyed bastards from Japan. The little Japs, Mackovick thought, won the war. Never again would anyone beat Mackovick. They would beat Lenin because Lenin was in the habit of loosing or at least being exiled. The little jerk had been exiled to Siberia but—with much inside help—escaped to Finland. Neither Trotsky or Lenin loved Russia as Mackovick loved Russia. Both wanted to be German Elite—German Intelligencia.
Mackovick and Stalin were the only professionals; Stalin, the Georgian, the Man of Steel didn’t do much outside his own district. He was a jerk, but at least he returned to the Worker’s Revolution of Georgia each time he escaped from Siberia. Stalin was his only competition. The Bolsheviks would not place Trotsky at the head of the Party because he was an avowed Menshevik who wanted world revolution—he didn’t give a crap about Russia. The Party would exclude Lenin, because the little sniveling weasel was never around; a ghost who sent letters from the outside world. The Party would exclude the men of letters and elect a man of action. That left only Mackovick and Stalin: Jabon and Stalin. Jabon: he had started using his new name only months before. All the others had changed their names, why shouldn’t he.
Jabon would kick Stalin’s butt. Stalin was a little puke. Five foot five! The little puke was only five foot five inches tall! The next time Jabon met Little Joe, Jabon would beat the midget to a pulp; just like beating the little punk Alexander; probably bring the same pleasure. Terror in other people always brought him great pleasure. He would use terror against the Nationalist; against Stalin; against his fat, pig wife; against her bastard sons. “The attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror. Virtue, without terror is fatal. Terror, without virtue is impotent.”
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